![\"Image](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/C201809-CS-U-of-C-Professor-Murder.jpg?resize=300%2C264&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nShortly after 1 p.m. on May 21, 1991, a secretary working on the third floor of Swift Hall at the University of Chicago heard a faint “pop,” as she described it. The sound came from the men’s restroom next to her office. It was produced by a .25-caliber (6.35 mm) pistol that had fired one round into the head of Prof. Ioan Culianu, a rising scholar of esotericism and Gnosticism and a proteg\u00e9 of the famous historian of religion Mircea Eliade1<\/a><\/sup> (1907\u20131986).<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n The killer was never caught<\/a>. He did stalk Culianu during a book-sale event, which brought numerous outsiders into the building, but he also had to be someone who would not look out of place in an academic setting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Bruce Lincoln’s Secrets, Lies, and Consequences: A Great Scholar’s Hidden Past and His Proteg\u00e9’s Unsolved Murder<\/em> <\/a>is not a whodunit. More of a “why was it done-it.” Lincoln is a well-recognized name in religious studies and teaches at Chicago’s Divinity School<\/a>, as did Eliade and Culianu.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n My review of Secrets, Lies, and Consequences<\/em> was just published in the American Academy of Religion’s free Reading Religion <\/em>site, and you can read it here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I sweat bullets over that review, because its length was limited, and yet I was trying to fit in bits of Romanian history, Eliade’s life story, as well as Lincoln’s conjectures about the killer’s motive\u2014which might have been a certain person saying, in effect, “Who will rid me of this troublesome scholar?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n I have defended Eliade here before against accusations about what he wrote or did in the 1930s. See, for instance, “Mircea Eliade, Witches, and Fascists<\/a>” from 2020, where I did have room to go into the history more than I could do in a book review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I always took Eliade at his word (in his published journals ) that when he left Romania to serve as a diplomat in Lisbon, he left all his previous associations behind. One thing that Lincoln’s book does is make me wonder, was I right or was I too naive? <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n Shortly after 1 p.m. on May 21, 1991, a secretary working on the third floor of Swift Hall at the University of Chicago heard a faint “pop,” as she described it. The sound came from the men’s restroom next to her office. It was produced by a .25-caliber (6.35 mm) pistol that had fired one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"Pronounced roughly \\\"MIR-cha EH-li-a-de.\\\" \",\"id\":\"7ad82262-a19e-4fc5-9d0d-418171acf794\"},{\"content\":\" Several of my own professors were Eliade's former students too. His influence was huge.\",\"id\":\"5f20581e-ea1c-4f5c-bdc4-646e98112343\"}]"},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,184,247,292,4,12],"class_list":["post-13919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-chicago","tag-crime","tag-romania","tag-scholarship","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3Cv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4718,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4718","url_meta":{"origin":13919,"position":0},"title":"A Day and a Night in Occult Chicago","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"For the third time in four years, we had a pre-conference event that tied into Pagan studies somehow. (Previously: Montr\u00e9al, San Francisco.) This was the Occult Chicago conference organized by Jason Winslade at DePaul University\u2014his take on \"Chicago Quarter,\" an urban orientation class that all first-year DePaul students must take.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Chicago\"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=chicago"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/ceres1-300x294.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5382,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5382","url_meta":{"origin":13919,"position":1},"title":"Magick and Improvisational Comedy","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 27, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Really? Witchcraft at Second City Chicago? Magical warding for the building? Or were those \"demons\" just metaphorical? How come this was not part of last November's \"Occult Chicago\" tour?","rel":"","context":"In \"Chicago\"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=chicago"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4685,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4685","url_meta":{"origin":13919,"position":2},"title":"The ‘Occult Chicago’ Event","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Looking forward to this event a lot. It should fortify me for the hard business of a confrontation with a certain publisher's editorial director. And keep an eye on Rik Garrett's Occult Chicago blog. Why don't you start one for your town?","rel":"","context":"In \"Chicago\"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=chicago"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4991,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4991","url_meta":{"origin":13919,"position":3},"title":"Copy Editors Killed in Chicago Manual-AP Violence","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\"At this time we have reason to believe the killings were gang-related and carried out by adherents of both the AP and Chicago styles, part of a vicious, bloody feud to establish control over the grammar and usage guidelines governing American English,\u201d said FBI spokesman Paul Holstein, showing reporters graffiti\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"publishing\"","block_context":{"text":"publishing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=publishing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":136,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=136","url_meta":{"origin":13919,"position":4},"title":"The comet that hit Chicago\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 7, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The comet that hit Chicago On our last Amtrak layover in Chicago, last December, Mary and I walked up through the \"Miracle Mile\" shopping district and saw the ornate municipal water tower that stood alone, surrounded by desolation, after the Great Fire of 1871. Now comes a suggestion that a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9301,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9301","url_meta":{"origin":13919,"position":5},"title":"The Trip to Salem: Southern Colorado \u2014 Chicago","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 15, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The eastbound Southwest Chief, which originates in Los Angeles, rolls into La Junta, Colorado, at sunset. A near-miss in Chicago: the sleeping car attendant had lined up everyone's bags on the platform, which is a dimly lit. I found my carry-on bag, rolled it into Union Station, down the corridors\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13919"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13927,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13919\/revisions\/13927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/lincoln-secrets-lies.jpg?resize=459%2C706&ssl=1\")
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